October 14, 2012

Taken became a hit later on a box office hit with its dvd sales. The first one was great in regard of the well thought through story and a different reason for his fight. Getting back his innocent daughter from slave traders was a refreshing and different approach then the usually vengeance plot.

The main character was a nearly perfect soldier but sometimes even he made mistakes or got knocked over. Besides his paranoiac thoughts and the resulting interactions with his daughter were just hilarious to watch.

Liam Neeson is back as Bryan Mills and has a problem with the Albanian... again. This poor guy never get the chance to enjoy his family trips in a foreign country, but at least the setting in Istanbul is a unusual one.

Plot: After the events in Paris in Taken, family members of the men whom Bryan Mills killed while searching for his daughter, Kim, return to their hometown, Tropojë, Albania, for the funeral of the men whom Bryan had killed. During the ceremony, Murad Hoxha, the employer of the men and father of Marko, a victim whom Bryan killed by electrocution, states that they will find Bryan to avenge the deaths of their loved ones.

The Albanians are as gruesome as they were in the first one, but this time they capture Bryan Mills himself. He tries to escape with the help of his daughter, which was kinda like the reverse plot of the first one. Seeing him nearly defenseless in a comb wasn't as fun to watch, but at least something different. The key point to solve the the riddle of where the hideout is are repetitive, which sucks out some tension. That was the good part they kept from the first one. The second half is more of a typical action movie. The guards and enemies acting careless and dumb way too often. Every time they sit with their backs to the doors or/and are distracted by dogs, films or newspapers, which makes it too easy for him to win against them. One of the part which made the first one so great was the feeling that not everything will go alright for him, that he may fails and sacrifices himself in order to save his beloved daughter. You won't feel such a thing as he is to powerful and unharmed throughout the movie.

The story was different enough of its predecessor that it didn't feel too much alike, but thats the
point which broke its neck. Instead of another great thought of story
we get a typical action story. A Father seeks revenge for his dead son
and tortures the ones the main characters loves. This was already seen in
a lot of films. The only difference in the story was the excellent presented
relationship and hardship between father and daughter and the idea of
reversing the tracking of the hideout. There were fewer fighting scenes and sometimes the camera got to shaky, which is a disturbing phenomena in recent Hollywood productions. seriously, who has fun watching a scene in which you barely can grasp the actions taken by the characters? In the end Taken 2 was a good movie, which couldn't reach its predecessor quality, but is far better than most action movies.

Do you like shaky camera actions scenes or do they annoy you as much as they do me? Do you think they add action and suspense to the story?

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Kommentare:

It’s exactly the same type of stuff the second go around, except with more of it. More action, more running, more shooting, and most of all, more Liam Neeson kicking ass. That’s all I really needed. Nice review Patrick.

Actually Liam Neeson has less screen time because of the larger part his fictional daughter plays this time. There are also fewer fighting Scenes and fewer destructions. Most of the "badass" things like explosions happen offscreen.

Thanks for your compliment. I will definetely continue with watching movies and maybe also with writing reviews for them. :)

Bourne 3 and Hunger Games are fine examples to show how you shouldn't overuse the shaky cam. I just don't get what is fun about watching a blurry mess of brownish pixels for several seconds. It's not like thats the only way to create action/tension, but probably the cheapest without looking like a trash movie.

Taken 2 is somewhere between a quit/smoothful movie and the two mentioned above.

As i mentioned in my review. Taken 2 is a good film, but not as exceptional great as the first one was. To compare it with music, then i would say that the first one was a One-Hit-Wonder and the second one is more like the one you like to hear sometimes on the radio while driving, but that you would never buy a copy for yourself.

I like to write reviews that aren't like "that movie is bad, that one is great", instead i try to tell the reader what i liked and disliked about it so they can decide for themselves if they want to see it.

The rapid cuts and shakey camera stuff is a hangover from the Bourne movies. Since they want to get this certficated for as large an audience as possible there are no long shot fight sequences, the presentation is more abstract. Whilst it creates a frenetic scene and implies lots of action it is not explicit as and R or 15 rated movie. Interesing to see what they can get away with in search of the largest audience. Not the first Taken film was an 18/R and much more graphic in its violence.

They may get a better rating through this effect but also more displeased fans. The trend can be easily shown by the recently realesed Prometheus, which got good sales for beeing one of the only left high rated movies.

Yeah, this one is definitely not worth watching in that case. I have not heard of Spartan. I will have to check it out; thanks for the recommendation! I will watch just about anything with Clark Gregg in it. vexmovies, m4ufree movies,